The One Behind It All Chapter 27

At the beginning, Huawei's Wanmen mobile phone was not very perfect, far inferior to Bell's S1240. Huawei's image at this time was also far inferior to Shanghai Bell, and it could not compete head-on with it. Therefore, it adopted a roundabout tactic of outflanking - first capturing the rural market, as well as backward provinces and cities in the northeast, northwest, and southwest. In these "poor" markets, Huawei launched a large-scale publicity campaign for V5 access IZL, using HONET access network to compete with Shanghai Bell's remote access module. At the same time, profits are used as subsidies and low prices are used as strategies to provoke price reduction competition. Adopting a low-price strategy, occupying the rural market with absolutely low prices that Bell cannot achieve, and then competing for market share in cities, gradually compressing Shanghai Bell's profit margins.

In 1999, Huawei entered Sichuan. At that time, Shanghai Bell's market share in Sichuan was 90%. At first, Huawei did not mention sales, and took the initiative to provide its access network to customers for free. This was used to spread network points all over Sichuan. Its opponents ignored Huawei's small moves. Immediately afterwards, Huawei grabbed the newly added access network and gradually connected the dots. After making breakthrough progress, Huawei took the opportunity to extend the advantages of the access network to switches. In the end, Huawei and Shanghai Bell kept pace with the two standards, and Huawei captured more than 70% of the new market in Sichuan.

In 1998, Huawei's sales surpassed Shanghai Bell for the first time, ranking tenth among the top 100 electronics companies with 7.18 billion yuan. In 1999, it ranked tenth again with sales of 10.2 billion yuan, further consolidating its leading position relative to Shanghai Bell.

Subsequently, with the launch of "broadband metropolitan area network", Huawei continued to expand its strategy of "surrounding cities from rural areas" and began to aggressively enter the data communications market. Huawei has positioned itself as an advocate of "broadband metropolitan area networks" and has successfully established a higher image in the minds of operators. In this field, Shanghai Bell no longer has the ability to compete with it.

In 2002, Alcatel acquired Bell, the foreign-owned subsidiary of Shanghai Bell, but its name was still Shanghai Bell. Until later, Alcatel (50% + 1 share) acquired Shanghai Bell. The famous golden 1 share gave Shanghai Bell a more Westernized The name---------Shanghai Bell Alcatel.